Fallen Comrade

[PRC-UTE]

Fallen Comrade of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement

Michael Devine
Volunteer - Irish National Liberation Army
Died on Hunger Strike on 20 August 1981

Michael "Micky" Devine was born on 26 May 1954 in Springtown, just
outside of Derry City. He grew up in the Creggan area of Derry City,
where he was raised in part by his sister Margaret and her husband
after their father died in 1965 and their mother in 1972.

He participated in the civil rights marches of the late 1960s, where
civilians were often brutally attacked, and he was hospitalised twice
due to police brutality. In the early 1970s, he joined the Labour
Party and the Young Socialists before joining Official Sinn Fein and
the Official Irish Republican Army. The increasingly reformist path
of the Officials lead to his leaving to join the Irish Republican
Socialist Party and the INLA in December 1974.

In 1976 he was arrested after an arms raid in Co. Donegal and
sentenced to 12 years in prison. He immediately joined the blanket
protest, which he participated in for four years before joining the
second hunger strike in 1981. While on hunger strike he drafted an
appeal to Irish workers which was smuggled out of Long Kesh Prison and
read at factory gates throughout Ireland (see below).

He was on hunger strike for 60 days. He was the third INLA Volunteer
to join the hunger strike and the third to die, at 7:50am on 20
August 1981. He was also the last of ten men to die during the hunger
strike.

He died as he lived: a Republican Socialist. Remember him with honour
and pride.

http://www.irsm.org/fallen/devine/

*******

It's hard to know what way to behave when a friend and a comrade is
slowly dying on Hunger Strike just a few cells away, everyone of
course tries to put on a brave face and act normal but both he and we
know that it is only make believe. We've organized story telling and
sing songs to keep up his morale, ours too, but it's hard, very hard.
It won't be long now until he's taken away to join the other Hunger
Strikers in the prison hospital and then?

Well it seems that only slow terrible death awaits them all. We try
to shout words of encouragement but what can you say to a dying man.
The screws for their part keep him as isolated from us as possible
and go out of there way to taunt and belittle him, yet in their midst
he, like his comrades is a giant. If they even had one ounce of their
courage if even they had a spark of decency, decency from these who
have tormented us all these years? Compassion from these who have
made all this suffering necessary?

No, not even a friendly word, not even a word of sympathy during the
long days and nights of agony but then neither he nor we expect it.
We know only too well that these people have been put here to torment
and persecute us and they have done their job well but not well
enough. They have served their British masters, the poor pathetic
fools, they think that inhumanity and cruelty can break us, haven't
they learnt anything? It strengthens us, it drives us on for then
more than ever we know that our cause is just.

Bobby Sands, Frank Hughes, Patsy O'Hara and Raymond McCreesh hunger
for justice, they have suffered all the indignities that a tyrant can
inflict yet still they fight back with their dying breath. Only a few
yards from here, four human skeletons lay wasting away and still the
fools the poor pathetic fools cannot break them. Even death will not
extinguish the flames of resistance and this flame will without doubt
engulf these who in their callousness and in greed have made all this
necessary. Britain you will pay!

Michael Devine
Long Kesh, 1981

[Kez]

comrade what other information you got on this comrades life? Is there a site of it?

[PRC-UTE]

IRSM page on Devine:
http://www.irsm.org/fallen/devine/

from Hunger strike Commemoration page:
http://larkspirit.com/hungerstrikes/bios/devine.html

[Redmau5]

R.I.P. Mickey Devine, and all the other Hunger Strikers who died for the cause of Irish freedom.

[papi]

As much as I respect the sentiment of the hunger strike, it serves no purpose without the media coverage. Otherwise one must resort to force.

[coda]

Salute to Red Mickey.

good post Oglagh. That was a long three months between my Bobby Sands' post and your Red Mickey's. Can't even imagine how torturous it must have been for them and their families. goes without saying the extraordinarily profound solidarity and strong will of resistance and heartfelt belief they had to endure such agonizing self-sacrifice. it Pisses me off furiously when i hear people say the Irish struggle and methods are wrong and misguided. Can it be so? 24 and 800 years later and they still remain occupied by the same oppressors. Ten unarmed men starve to death one by one and the imperalists still can't fathom the intrinsic urge for freedom and dignity that countless of men and women all over the world have risen up for and rather fight to the death than to be in bondage. It can never be wrong. the compulsion to struggle for freedom will always be stronger than a defeated submisson to subjugation.


here's a small e-book about the hungerstrikes -- has some religious undertones but still a very accurate moving account.

http://www.inac.org/irishhistory/hungerstrikes/chapters/1




So, Did Bobby Sands think he was wrong to pick up a gun against the invaders and fight for freedom on behalf of the people? And did he think he was wrong to die for it?


The Rhythm Of Time

There's an inner thing in every man,
Do you know this thing my friend?
It has withstood the blows of a million years,
And will do so to the end.

It was born when time did not exist,
And it grew up out of life,
It cut down evil's strangling vines,
Like a slashing searing knife.

It lit fires when fires were not,
And burnt the mind of man,
Tempering leandened hearts to steel,
From the time that time began.

It wept by the waters of Babylon,
And when all men were a loss,
It screeched in writhing agony,
And it hung bleeding from the Cross.

It died in Rome by lion and sword,
And in defiant cruel array,
When the deathly word was 'Spartacus'
Along with Appian Way.

It marched with Wat the Tyler's poor,
And frightened lord and king,
And it was emblazoned in their deathly stare,
As e'er a living thing.

It smiled in holy innocence,
Before conquistadors of old,
So meek and tame and unaware,
Of the deathly power of gold.

It burst forth through pitiful Paris streets,
And stormed the old Bastille,
And marched upon the serpent's head,
And crushed it 'neath its heel.

It died in blood on Buffalo Plains,
And starved by moons of rain,
Its heart was buried in Wounded Knee,
But it will come to rise again.

It screamed aloud by Kerry lakes,
As it was knelt upon the ground,
And it died in great defiance,
As they coldly shot it down.

It is found in every light of hope,
It knows no bounds nor space
It has risen in red and black and white,
It is there in every race.

It lies in the hearts of heroes dead,
It screams in tyrants' eyes,
It has reached the peak of mountains high,
It comes searing 'cross the skies.

It lights the dark of this prison cell,
It thunders forth its might,
It is 'the undauntable thought', my friend,
That thought that says 'I'm right!'

~Bobby Sands, Long Kesh Prison